RECENT COMMENTS BY Bob Jackson

Columns by Bob Jackson

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March 13, 2009
An analysis of any state program can begin with the long stilled voice of Frederic Bastiat. 'Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.' The current appeal by a section of the public for government subsidized health care exemplifies living at others' expense on steroids.

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Anarchists and other non-voters present laudable arguments to support their refusals to participate in voting. However, they paint with too broad a brush when they assert that voting in all times and in any circumstances constitute a support of the state. To that point, every literate person should read Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. The following worthwhile...

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June 4, 2007
The discussion at my office and lunch stop was about who got caught this week in an hours-long traffic snarl on the Washington, D.C. beltway, the circular highway that girds the nation's capital used by hundreds of thousands of commuters. As reported in the 5/31/07 edition of The Washington Post:

I discovered libertarian political thought listening to radio fill-in host Brian Wilson on WBAL in Baltimore in the late '90s. He was an entertaining radio personality who kept interjecting the words 'freedom' and 'Founding Fathers' into his discussions with callers. He challenged his listeners to think and gave them reading assignments. As a consequence, I discovered a political philosophy...

My path of libertarian self-discovery has held its share of revelations. One recurring discovery is how it always trails back to marriage and family. In fact, when looking at the supporting structures of a successful life, very little of it does not rest on a supportive family. It's the indispensable element of civilization. And while I'm certain there are individuals with chaotic family...

In 1796, Edward Jenner invented the first vaccination when he purposely inoculated an eight-year-old boy with the cowpox virus. In doing so, the eight-year-old's body was able to develop antibodies that enabled him to resist the deadly smallpox virus that was epidemic in Europe at that time. Neither disease was welcome in ideal circumstances, but in the plague environment, the boy developed the...

To paraphrase one infamous historical figure, 'political (or government) power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' The maxim is equally true when it comes to self-government ' it only exists where it can be backed up by force. I make a distinction between freedom of the self-governing kind and of the spiritual kind. A free spirit will elude domination by another human being, though his body may...

A believer in the merits of a political community that holds human freedom as the community's highest value should expect to be ridiculed, ignored, or shouted down by his opposite numbers in the political spectrum. From some adversaries, I expect the reason is because they rely primarily on an emotional framework for making decisions, and reasoned debate with them is a poor use of time under any...

I wear my green khaki pants rarely. But by coincidence or good fortune, I picked them out Tuesday evening, so that when two cops ordered me out of my car at gunpoint the next morning, I wasn't staining the knees of my pants when I complied and knelt in the wet grass of the median strip. Irritation was my overriding feeling -- irritation rapidly growing into fatalistic disgust.
Handcuffed, I...

When I had seven years under my belt, I was impatient to grow up and learn the mysteries of the world that would be revealed with adulthood. Some decades later, resolving the open questions on my childhood checklist has been something of a disappointment. I remember being terrified as a ten-year old of the Soviet military juggernaut presented in a Time magazine article. Since then, I've...

Thoughts of chattel slavery reverberate as background noise in the minds of many Black Americans, and its homilies seep into our daily conversation. One of my favorites is 'sold down the river,' referring to the Black Africans who sold other Black Africans to White slave traders. Somewhere 'down the river' waited the ocean, the middle passage, and slavery in the Americas . The saying, 'I got...

In less than 25 years, I've had to say a final farewell to a lot of good comedy acts. John Belushi reigned supreme during my high school years. 'Animal House' still ranks as one of the funniest movies ever. 'Saturday Night Live' alumni Phil Hartman and Chris Farley joined him too soon for my liking. John Candy and John Ritter got more than a few laughs out of me with their films and...

'Things would spin out of control! People would run around killing and looting!' Those are common responses I get when I explain to someone that we don't need coercive government managing every aspect of our lives. And I'm not just talking about government rules like the drug laws that kill people. Even the silly little meddling of our masters is costly as well as irritating. For example,...

Defending liberty against the Leviathan State will be an ongoing proposition for its champions and their heirs. The Asian empty-handed martial arts provide intriguing metaphors for the variety of tactics available. A first insight to glean from them is that the individual creators developed very different styles. This illustrates that there is not a single correct way of carrying out a...

Technically, Lala land is still a territory. Though the most populous region in the country, the powers-that-be never kick-started the constitutional process to ratify our 51st state ' the state of willful self-delusion. As a former resident and frequent visitor, I don't want to disparage Lala or its people too much. No one makes plans to move there. You sort of pass through at the first...

The concept of 'Self Ownership' ' corollary to 'Love thy Neighbor as Thyself' ' takes a stretch of the cerebral muscle. Most people never make the effort to venture beyond the 'I'm bored/hungry/thirsty/angry/tired/excited . . .' state of mind. Consequently, berating people, no matter how logical one's arguments, simply does not inspire a mind to shake loose of its shackles. Frequently, a whiff...

One thing I haven't seen around much anymore that we used often when I was in elementary school was the grab-bag. All of the students in a class each brought one treat to school. All of the treats were thrown into a bag, and then we could each take a turn reaching into the bag to pull out a surprise. Obviously, the game broke down if some students didn't bring anything. Those students had to...

By 1998, the last year of my overstay as a public school teacher, I'd learned to get along better with my students by sparing them my unsolicited advice about their personal business. However, on one occasion, I couldn't stop myself. I was teaching ninth grade math in an urban school with majority poor students. My class was mostly girls, 15 or 16 years old, because most of the boys on my...

There was a group of children who lived on the 21st block of Modern Lane. They were mostly content except that the nicest clothes, toys and candy were scarce. Consequently, very few had everything they wanted, and many of them individually worried that his other siblings were getting treats deserved by they themselves. They envied the possessions of one brother, in particular, for this brother...

The wisdom of Frederic Bastiat continues to open new doors for me. His fantastic essay 'The State' penetrates to the core of the rot that hangs over all of us like a weighted fisherman's net: 'The State is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.' This sad axiom is the master link of the chain that binds humanity: everyone wants to ride, but...

Isabel's sashay through my home state of Maryland during her romp across the Mid-Atlantic States provided an instructive demo of how quickly a human management apparatus can disappear. With the power outage (affecting over a million clients), streetlights, cameras, government schools, police services, and most of the rest of the control structure simply went missing-in-action.

Six years ago in my former career, I spent two years as a public high school teacher in Baltimore , Maryland . The students who were compelled to attend were nearly 100% black, and a large percentage of them had difficult lives. Many came from families whose primary income was some form of public assistance. One or both parents were absent from many of the homes. An astonishing number of...

I owe the gun control crowd a measure of thanks, for without their astoundingly illogical positions, I might still be a semi-comatose statist instead of a much more alert lover of human liberty. But I accepted the challenge of a pro gun rights radio talk show host and picked up John Lott's book More Guns, Less Crime. Staring sociological facts in the face shook the calcified cobwebs from my...

Though my sons are only two and five years old, I'm already engaged in internal debate of how to advise them on the important matter of marriage. Fred Reed's column warning about American women injects important discussion into the debate. After all, while a good marriage will be one of life's greatest joys, a bad one can ruin you emotionally, economically and even physically for years, if not...